


frailty (for the dearly departed)

by rioseco



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Gender-Neutral My Unit | Byleth, Implied Mild Byleth/Edelgard, Mental Health Issues, Minor Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/My Unit | Byleth, Not Beta Read, Post-Azure Moon, implied suicidal thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-09-29 23:24:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20444306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rioseco/pseuds/rioseco
Summary: “If you must haunt me, I will hear you out. I suppose I owe you that much, El.”“Is that so? And so? If I cried for your head, would you give it to me?” Her lips curl as she speaks. “The dead, as they say, need their tribute.”





	frailty (for the dearly departed)

It is the ides of the Red Wolf Moon. A brisk windy clime has settled upon Fhirdiad, though the seasons this year have not creeped down to nearly the usual full chill of Faerghus fame. Outside, the red moon sags heavy in the star-studded sky, piercing through his high glass windows to bathe his bedchambers with its dim scarlet glow.

Inside, there is a woman.

She is standing at the foot of Dimitri’s bed, her slender chin held high and lilac eyes steady on his tired, worn face.

“King of Delusion,” she addresses him coolly. Her faintest nod, the spitting image of polite acknowledgement, is underlined with an air of mockery. Her voice sounds crisp, just on the colder side of severe. It cuts through the silence as cleanly as the killing edge of her axe.

… He is not surprised to see this woman here. 

Her heavy red heels are caked with dirt and crusted layers of old, dried blood that flake and crumble over his thick bearskin rug. Imperiously, she peers down at him as she declares, once more. “So, you truly _are_ a delusional fool, to believe you deserve all of _this_.” A flourish of her bloodstained cape, a bow of the head towards his slumbering spouse beside him and eyes that still - even now - go impossibly soft around the edges as she gazes upon the figure. She always _had_ been uniquely tender towards the professor, though Dimitri could never quite put his finger on _why_. Perhaps that was simply the nature of their enigmatic teacher: magnetic to all that encountered them, even with their blade pressed flush against the neck.

“…I’ve been expecting you.” Dimitri murmurs in a gravelly whisper, slowly pushing himself out from the warmth of his bed. As his weight shifts, Byleth gingerly curls slim calloused fingers around his wrist - as if to unwittingly dissuade him with the gentle, cautious touch - as if to bring him back to his better senses, as always… And yet…

Dimitri rises, carefully brushing aside the soothing warmth. Enough time wasted agonizing with the dead has allowed him to know without reservation: this one will not so easily leave - not without having her say. Perhaps, he thinks distantly, not ever.

“Hmm, is that so.” muses the woman, a quiet thread of amusement dancing under her words. When he straightens up and drapes his heavy fur cloak over his shoulders, she raises an eyebrow. “Oh? Walking away from me, I see. How cruel of you, Dimitri. I didn’t know you had it in you.”

“… Though I know you are nothing but a ghost of who I once knew, it is still…” he hesitates before shaking his head. With weighted footsteps, he walks through his bedchambers and silently unlatches the heavy wooden doors. “If you must haunt me, I will hear you out. I suppose I owe you that much, El.”

“Is that so? And so? If I cried for your head, would you give it to me?” Her lips curl as she speaks. “The dead, as they say, need their tribute.”

In that moment, she looks, now, just as she had when she’d flung the dagger past his outreached hand. Defiant. Challenging. Unyielding.

It takes him a long heavy second to drop the memory - the flash of cold regret and sorrow - as he gazes upon the image of his dead step-sister considering him in that calculating, careful manner of hers. “I no longer intend to live for the dead, Edelgard.” He murmurs simply, taking steady, quiet steps to set forth from his chambers.

“Yet, here you are, indulging me just the same,” muses the woman. Her heavy boots soundlessly glide alongside him as she passes through the torchlit halls, shoulder to shoulder with the newly crowned King. In another life, perhaps they could have walked together like this - he, the king of Faerghus, welcoming the Adrestian Emperor into his home like a dear old friend, for a diplomatic meeting or perhaps even a friendly unofficial visit. That had been what he’d envisioned back when he’d first crossed paths with the young familiar woman at the Academy… A fond, hopeful sort of aspiration, although even back then, it had felt so far out of his reach when all he could feel were the hands of the dead dragging him deeper into himself.

The sound of Dimitri’s heavy footsteps bounce up the towering stone walls, though such noises are hardly new for the knights stationed for night duty. With a nod towards the guard, he steps out into the large central courtyard within his castle awash with the crimson glow of the low hanging moon. The pale ivory flowerbeds lining the stone path have been carefully tended to by Dedue, and they are the resilient sort - beautiful but hardy, somehow still flowering despite the deep, unforgiving chill of Faerghus nights. The dusting of snow glows faintly red, and when he walks along the white-laced trail to sit upon a steel filigreed bench, only one pair of footsteps leave imprints along the path.

“Indulging you, you say?” he finally says, with a dark hint of amusement. “… Well, perhaps. I suppose it may seem strange to say now, but… it does seem a part of me still grieves you yet. Despite it all.”

She makes a small noise of frustration.

"… Even now you lack the conviction to leave me.”

When Dimitri looks up at her looming figure, she smiles. There is little joy in the expression as she continues coolly, “Though you certainly seemed to relish in your conviction to murder those who simply fought on my orders. Tell me, Dimitri - do those men and women also appear to you as I do now? Or did their lives simply not matter as much as mine?”

His hands, brittle and stiff from the frigid air, tighten around the steel arms of his seat and though he tries to measure himself - the metal yields and snaps under the pressure of his grip. The harsh sound rings out uselessly in the empty courtyard.

The deaths, in spite of what this phantom is attempting to imply, do not leave him, but the faces do blur. He’d slaughtered so many, collected each of their bloody corpses like heavy chains around his ankles, and though he cannot recall each life he has taken… though he cannot feign such kindness or such attentiveness to the plight of the weak that he’s murdered, the collective still whispers to him at night.

_A madman_, they’d snarl in his face, _a murderous rabid beast, unfit to walk on his hind legs, much less govern the entire continent._

… Surely, his advisors would and _do_ tell him otherwise, and yet… there is no denying who he is or what he is capable of. They have seen firsthand how little he cared for the lives of anybody caught wearing the colors of the empire; so how…?

The faith that his people and his friends have put in him to overcome something so foul, burned into his blood like a curse… Does he truly deserve that faith and can he ever truly live up to that expectation? How long would this question torture him, despite all of his friends’ best efforts?

Perhaps Edelgard is right…

“Tell me, Dimitri.” She says again, stepping closer now. “What _exactly_ have you accomplished? Did you think if you killed me, the voices would stop? That Fodlan would be at peace once more?” As she nears, her boots crumble dried desiccated blood onto the flowers and crush the beds underfoot. “Are you so naive to think I began this war for no reason at all? Have I not simply become another voice to add to the chorus of all those you failed?”

“I…” Dimitri starts, wearily looking down at his destructive hands as if in search of an answer that will not come to him and has eluded him for so many years already. He raises a heavy stiff hand to his head, his eye, pressing the heel of his palm against the pain arising in his head. _Please stop_, _please stop, please —_

“If you _truly_ wish to bring an end to the voices, and my head was not sacrifice enough, perhaps you might consider that the answer lies in offering up your _own_ head to the fallen.”

…

... A thought not entirely foreign, even now. He’d taken one step into the light, hoping not to be burned by the kindness of those around him, but the voices in his head still plague him on his bad days and threaten to pull him two steps backwards. Perhaps Edelgard is right - truly, the only way he could silence the noise, the violence, the cruelness must be —

“…”

A small noise of irritation.

She steps away from his hunched figure as if repulsed. “…How weak-willed you are, Dimitri.” Edelgard mutters, no longer gazing down upon him. “How could a king unable to even control himself ever hope to rule? Truly, Fodlan might be best served without a king at all than to have one so --”

  
“…Dima,” A voice calls out quietly. The familiar name, the familiar tone cuts through the hot white strain blinding his head like a warm numbing balm. Beside him, Edelgard stills and cocks her head to take in the silhouette of their old professor, backlit by the streaming warm light of the torches lining the castle corridors.

“Ah,” Dimitri startles, stumbling as he rises to his feet. “Byleth. My apologies - did I wake you? Please, go back inside before you catch cold.”

Dismissing the words outright, Byleth steps forward, their thin grey cape slung across their shoulders barely serving to protect them from the cold, only offering a single question to cut straight to the heart of the matter. “…Who is it tonight?”

Beside him, Edelgard wordlessly steps forward and though she cannot touch, and though she cannot be heard, he swears she whispers something soundlessly as she reaches out to graze Byleth’s hand before slipping right through them

“It’s… nothing, truly. Please, don’t mind me. I had hoped some fresh air might help clear my head.” He offers Byleth a faint smile, knowing even without the paper-thin excuse that Byleth can _see_ the lingering exhaustion and emotion drawn on his face.

Stepping into his space, Byleth frowns, touching Dimitri’s hand with a gentleness he does not deserve and an unending well of patience that seems to never run dry. “It’s her, isn’t it?”

“…”

It takes a tense lingering few seconds before he shakes his head in defeat. “I’d rather hoped not to disturb you or remind you of such terrible memories, but… yes, you are correct. As always, it seems…”

The look in Byleth’s eyes is rather inscrutable, though they fuss over Dimitri wordlessly all the same.Their still warm hands press into his and squeeze tightly, and he feels… grounded for at least that moment. 

Still. He is not naive.

He does not pretend that Edelgard, with her inscrutable pale eyes, left standing alone in the crimson glow of the empty courtyard, will not return for him on another cold pathetic night.

Even now, the phantom of his step-sister gazes wordlessly at him, unflinching and unyielding, with eyes that pierce through his meagre facade like so many sentimental daggers. Even as Byleth ushers him back into the castle, she continues to watch wordlessly. Something strange and indecipherable lines the edges of her pale lilac eyes, and though she says nothing as he leaves, her lips curl into a smile as they move to say,

“Until next time, King of Delusion.”

**Author's Note:**

> ... I made Edelgard pretty cruel because she’s part of Dimitri’s psyche, not because I think she’d actually talk like that to him. Or would she… Anyways, she’s obviously needling his insecurities, because it’s mostly Dimitri projecting all of his doubts onto Edelgard.
> 
> Please know I mean no offense to anybody in writing this, and if you did find offense in anything here, please feel free to let me know as I'd prefer not to alienate anybody with my writing.


End file.
